The purpose of this journal is to write 99 reviews on the 99 books that I will be reading this year. Just a new goal that I came up with five seconds ago. Not a new years resolution but something to give purpose to my journal and hopefully keep you interested. It'll be strictly book reviews and personal entries are for friends only!

So, just introduce yourself and I'll add you :)

Title: Foundling
Series: Monster Blood Tattoo
Auther: D.M Cornish
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 433 (including appendix and glossary)
Rating: 5/5


from the blurb

The vast lands of the Half-Continent bear the scars of centuries of conflict between humans and monsters. Only the hardiest souls now travel the inland ways: merchants, Imperial messengers and - bravest of all - the monster-hunters. To be a hunter takes great cunning and extraordinary skill, for the creatures are as deadly as they are varied. Bogles, rever-men, grinnlings and nickers - any one can kill a human quicker than thought.

Not that Rossamund Bookchild should worry. The orphan boy with the girl's name lives safe within the walls of the Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. Safe, at least, until the da he is recruited into the service of the Empire by a strange man with blood-red yes. This is his story.

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Title: Cloudstreet
Auther: Tim Winton
Genre: Australian fiction
Pages: 426
Rating: 4/5

from the blurb

From separate catastrophes two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing a great, breathing, shuddering joint called Cloudstreet, where they begin their lives again from scratch. For twenty years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts.

Tim Winton's funny, sprawling saga is an epic novel of love and acceptance.

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Two journal entries in two days? Whaaaaat? I have never heard the likes of it! lol, I must be on a roll. Well let's just hope I keep this up, hn?



Title: Life of Pi
Auther: Yann Martel
Genre: postcolonial, magical realism (fantasy elements)
Pages: 319
Rating: 5/5

from the blurb

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan... and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

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Title: Coraline
Auther: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy, Horror
Pages: 162
Rating: 5/5

from the blurb

When Coraline steps through a door to find another house strangely similar to her own (only better), things seem marvelous. But there's another mother there, and another father, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Coraline will have to fight with all her wits and courage if she is to save herself and return to her ordinary life.

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This is another recommendation for young adult-though it is appropriate for children as well.



Title: Shadow Queen
Auther: Deborah Kalin
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 302
Rating: 3.5/5

From the Blurb

'I put out a hand to steady myself as the vision took me. The parquetry floor washed to black... As if sparked by the hard galre, a fire burst and raged through the room, the flames hot enough to crisp bones and raise the smell of marrow burning to cinders. And me in the middle, wrapped int he balck shroud of the dead.'

For Matilde of House Svanaten, accession to the Turasi throne is long overdue. But her imperious grandmother remains reluctant to hand over power.

When Matilde's mysterious aunt, Helena, turns up for the Turasi's most important festival, suspicions abound. Why has Helena returned? And why are there soldiers from the despised Ilthean empire massed at the southern border?

Hard on Helena's arrival, Matilde is struck by a vision marning of doom. And it isn't long before a powerful enemy strikes at the very heart of power, leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake.

After narrowly surviving, the conflgration that shatters her entire world, Matilde must pit herself against her family's conqueror in a battle not just for the throne, but for her very existence.

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Special note about these books by the way, if you are a teacher I highly recommend these for students. Please take these books into consideration, they are all very good. Even if you don't enjoy them... I'm sure your students will.



Title: Finnikin of the Rock
Auther: Melina Marchetta
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 399
Rating: 4/5

From the blurb

Finnikin of the Rock and his guardian, Sir Topher, have not been home to their beloved Lumatere for ten years. Not since the dark days when the royal family was murdered and the kingdom put under a terrible curse. But then Finnikin is summoned to meet Evanjalin, a young woman with an incredible claim: the heir to the throne of Lumatere, Prince Balthazar, is alive.

Evanjalin is determined to return home and she is the only one who can lead them to the heir. As they journey together, Finnikin is affected by her arrogance... and her hope. He begins to believe he will see his childhood friend, Prince Balthazar, again. And that their cursed people will be able to enter Lumatere and be reunited with those trapped inside. He even believes he will find his imprisoned father.

But Evanjalin is not what she seems. And the Truth will test not only Finnikin's faith in her... but in himself.

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Title: The Graveyard Book
Auther: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 4/5

From the blurb

Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place-he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their timely ghostly teachings-like the ability to Fade. Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead? And then there are things like ghouls that aren't really one thing or the other. This chilling tale is Neil Gaiman's first full-length novel for middle-grade readers since the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Coraline. Like Coraline, this book is sure to enchant and surprise young readers as well as Neil Gaiman's legion of adult fans.

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